


Chrysalis

by IrisCandy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Blood, Choking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I love Clexa and all but I couldn't fit the two of them in here and I'm sorry about that, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Stabbing, Violence, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisCandy/pseuds/IrisCandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lines are blurring. She doesn’t know where it’s appropriate for a friend to step in, or for a leader to dictate, but she’s sure something happened to Bellamy in the mountain - something beyond short-lived fights and strenuous sprints. He’s clinging to his sister like a lifeline, and to everybody else it seems it’s because she almost died, and they’re probably right. But to Clarke, it looks suspiciously like he’s the one in need, as he grips her hand in his and stares down at her with a furrowed brow that hasn’t smoothed in days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags for trigger warnings! Violence is not graphic, but it is present. 
> 
> I see you've stumbled upon my first writerly introduction to The 100 fandom. Hello! Welcome to the pain party where we drink a lot and cry a lot more. 
> 
> This is mainly a Bellarke fic with some O & Bell feelings thrown in because who doesn't love them? 
> 
> I listened to all songs by Thomston while writing this piece. He's incredible, be sure to check him out. 
> 
> Also, I'm sorry in advance.

 

He turns his back for one second –

One godawful second –

And he can’t understand how he doesn’t feel the impact when the dagger goes through her stomach. It’s twisted and _twisted_ and she screams and he’s somewhere else, looking at someone else, fighting someone else. His eyes still sting from being in that dark mountain for so long and he’s so delirious that he’d almost been stuck in the neck for the fifth time and he hasn’t had a drop of water in a dangerously long time but he can’t believe, now, how he’d let all of this distract him.

He buries a blade through a mountain man and turns around as his vision tunnels on the only thing that matters -

_(How could he ever forget that she is the only thing that matters?)_

\- And somehow he manages to run toward her even as his heart stops working.

He should have felt it happening like the same dagger was being pressed through every part of him, and yet he’s so slow, so oblivious even to the absolute worst thing that could ever happen, that he can’t even make it in time to catch her before she falls.

He sees Octavia’s grimace and its like the worst pain in the world. The sick twist of his stomach when her blood paints his hands red almost sends him retching and he hardly feels how people are tugging on him and telling him useless things like _calm down_ and he’s ignoring horrified whispers of _did they torture him?_ and _get her out of here_ and _Clarke, we need Clarke. Where’s Clarke?_

And he just doesn’t have time for any of it because he’s too useless to help his sister and someone needs to _help his sister._

She writhes and squirms beneath him muttering between clenched teeth that she’s okay, that they should let her go, while he presses on the gaping hole in her abdomen. He chokes out some hopeless, soothing bullshit to help wipe that dazed look off of her paling face, and then he tries screaming at all the warm bodies around him with a voice that’s already shot to hell because nobody seems to notice how the world is crumbling around them all.

Until his rescue comes in a flash of blonde hair.

Something jumps on him as her hands replace his on Octavia’s stomach. She screams his name, but he’s already whipping around to jab his knife in the offender’s eye a few more times than necessary, hoping that somebody else’s blood might obliterate the remainder of Octavia’s on his hands.

He’s not sure how long they continue like this – Clarke struggling to keep the blood in Octavia’s body while Bellamy single-handedly fights off every mountain man that tries to get in her way (which is the easiest thing he’s ever done, really, with this anger – this disgusting, horrid _fear_ – pumping heavily in his veins like the fuel to a dangerous machine.)

Maybe the war is being won, because soon Bellamy’s defenses multiply and Clarke has conjured a few pathetic excuses for nurses by her side and yet there still remains enough of them and their allies to fight off whatever’s left of the mountain men.

Maybe the war is being won, because he slows down for only a moment, when suddenly he can’t hear anything anymore and his body flushes with cold.

He stabs something, and his vision crowds over with black, the world fading to silhouettes. He has the strangest sensation, as if someone has thrown a sheet over him, like a candlesnuffer over a fading flame.

He falls to his knees and sends a prayer to someone he knows can’t be listening that Clarke’s hopeless outcry is for him and not his dying sister.

 

*** * ***

 

This isn’t how she thought she’d see him again, but she supposes she should be grateful.

She sent him in there.

It’s a miracle he even came back out.

He’s lying there on a cot in the med bay, next to the injured and the near dead, including his sister. Her mother is trying to get some liquid in him, and people are panicking all around because they can’t afford to lose Bellamy Blake, and all that’s going through her mind are the words _it’s worth the risk_ and they’re like blades across her insides.

“Bellamy, can you hear me?” Her mother asks with her hands on his face, calm and cool and collected, but she only tuts and pulls her hands away as someone calls her name frantically across the crowded room. She rushes over to them as Clarke takes over with Bellamy.

She gently pushes his tangled hair away from his bloodied face. He’s still covered in sweat and grime, but he wears an expression of peace as he sleeps, completely out of place in a room filled with screams and agony.

A small chill goes through her as she notices how similar the Blake siblings look in sleep, how eerily different they seem now then from when they’re awake.

They look like children, and suddenly she feels herself shrinking as well.

“Come back to me, Bellamy,” she whispers under the chaos.

She’s a mess, Octavia’s blood is making her skin itch, the battle is flashing behind her eyes and churning her stomach, and all she’s hoping now is that Bellamy would just opens his eyes.

And how selfish she is, to wish that he would be the one to tell her that everything would be okay.

 

 *** *** *****

 

He comes around to the sound of voices - one achingly familiar, the other just a distant memory.

“Both Blakes are out?”

“Both of them.”

“So we’re doomed then?”

The familiar voice is clipped and cold. “They’ll be fine.”

“Better get rid of that wrinkly thing between your eyes if you wanna convince everyone else of that, _Princess._ ”

There’s a tense silence at the nickname as Bellamy’s heart skips a beat. Then, the sound of flesh hitting leather, and the familiar voice saying, “Out.”

“I’m just sayin’-”

“ _Get out._ ”

He hears hesitation, then footsteps and the flaps of a tent.

The silence that follows is heavier than anything he’s ever felt, until suddenly he remembers the weight of Octavia’s blood on his hands.

His eyes fly open, and he sits up before he even knows he’s lying down.

“Bellamy, whoa!”

Clarke hurtles toward him and places her hands none-too-gently on his shoulders, attempting to push him back.

“Where is she?” Bellamy asks, his eyes darting around the tent aimlessly. His throat seems to be coated with sand paper.

“Octavia is okay,” Clarke says, slowly and clearly. Her face fills his vision, her eyes wide and blue as the sky. “Do you hear me? She’s okay.”

Bellamy shakes his head and struggles to get words out. His throat burns horribly. “No, no – I have to see her.”

“Okay, just- slow down. Fine,” Clarke says, and she steps back slightly with her hands still outstretched as if to catch him, but he ignores them as he swings his legs over the cot. She knows him well enough to know that doctor’s orders don’t mean a damn thing to him.

When he stands, he prays that he doesn’t sway on his feet.

He doesn’t, but rather, he plummets forward and is headed toward the ground again until Clarke throws her weight beneath him, holding him up with a shoulder.

She’s quiet as they both attempt to shift his weight back onto the cot, and if the world wasn’t spinning violently around him, he might see that wry twist of her lips that means she disapproves with great vexation.

He holds up a finger. “Just give me a second. I can make it.”

As the world slows slightly, he sees her put her hands on her knees and roll her neck before staring up at him with a grave look. “You’re severely dehydrated and exhausted beyond anything me _or_ my mother has ever seen, Bellamy.”

“ _Octavia_ was bleeding out on the ground from a hole in her stomach the last time I saw her, so forgive me if _exhaustion_ doesn’t really faze me right now,” he snaps, glaring at her from behind matted hair.

His voice is harsher than he’d intended but Clarke’s eyes soften as she lifts herself into a standing position. “Bellamy,” she says, her voice gentle.

He waits with pursed lips because he feels he should listen.

“Do you trust me?” she asks.

Bellamy narrows his eyes, because _obviously_ , but judging by the crease in Clarke’s brow, it isn’t so obvious to her.

The pang of hurt that shoots through him is a lot sharper than he’d expected, but he sighs. “Of course I trust you.”  

Something flashes in her eyes – that strange mix of guilt and relief that he’s only ever seen in the eyes of a leader. She sends an almost imperceptible glance to the cut on his arm where Lovejoy had slashed him during their fight, and then to his face where he knows he has a split lip and bit of bruising.

His insides twist uncomfortably as he realizes that her guilt is because of him, for sending him to disable the acid fog.

 _Don’t be stupid, Clarke,_ he curses silently, and he half-heartedly hopes that it shows on his face. She’s their leader now – the last thing they need is her judgement to be clouded by guilt.

He decides in that second that she can never know what really happened to him in Mount Weather. It will be the secret he brings to his grave – the one he’s sure will be dug much sooner than later.

As thoughts of Mount Weather creep into his mind, he feels the ghosts of cold chains against the skin of his wrists and his throat constricts as he’s reminded of the clamp around his neck. A cold sweat breaks out on his palms and his lungs shrink, but he clenches his fists and wills thoughts of the mountain far, far away.

He focuses instead on the gold aura around Clarke’s head as stray strands of hair catch the sunlight. It slows his heart considerably.

Clarke straightens, pulling herself out of her own dark place. “Then you can trust me when I say that Octavia is _fine._ And that you need rest.”

Bellamy ponders that for a second or two, clearing his throat. “I appreciate the thought, Princess, really. But if you think I’m going to sleep here when the last thing I remember is my sister dying in the middle of a battlefield, then I think you might be the one who needs the rest.” 

Clarke frowns and stares at him long enough to make him squirm, but she only nods, and Bellamy slides off of the cot a little more carefully this time. He notices her hand twitch at her side when he sways slightly, but she doesn’t reach out to him. He gives her a nod of thanks before moving to leave the tent.

“Bellamy.”

He turns on his heel, impatient. “What?”  

Clarke licks her lips, her eyes sad. “Lincoln is dead.”

Bellamy is silent as a lump forms in his throat. His brow furrows as if the meaning was unclear, but Clarke’s expression is unchanging.

“Does…” His voice falters, but Clarke understands.

She gives a minute shake of her head, and his heart sinks.

“She doesn’t know.”

 

*** * ***

 

Octavia looks clean.

Her face is covered in raised scars and her skin is pallid, but she’s clean. Her hair is loose from her Grounder braids for the first time in a very long time, courtesy of Bellamy’s fidgeting, and it’s splayed out on the pillow in a sheet of chocolate brown.

She looks peaceful as she sleeps.

Bellamy hasn’t left her side since he saw her again. He’s taken great care to keep a blanket pulled up to her chin, concealing her bandaged torso still stained in blood, and he’s fed her more food in an hour than he’s fed himself in a day.

When Octavia cried about Lincoln, he was there to hold her. When rowdy kids gathered outside their tent in celebration of winning the battle, he was there to scare them off. When she needed somebody’s hand to grip while Clarke changed her bandages, he held out his own.

And as far as she knew, the last time he slept was when he was forced to, after succumbing to dehydration.

Clarke hasn’t always known exactly what to do as a leader or even a friend, but she’d managed to get by. Now, however, she truly has no clue. Lines are blurring. She doesn’t know where it’s appropriate for a friend to step in, or for a leader to dictate, but she’s sure something happened to Bellamy in the mountain - something beyond short-lived fights and strenuous sprints. She saw it in the way his face paled in the tent, the way he avoided conversation, the way he couldn’t focus on one thing for longer than a few minutes.

He’s clinging to his sister like a lifeline, and to everybody else it seems it’s because she almost died, and they’re probably right.

But to Clarke, it looks suspiciously like he’s the one in need, as he grips her hand in his and stares down at her with a furrowed brow that hasn’t smoothed in days.

Gently letting the flaps of the Blakes’ tent slide closed, she steps back with a sigh at her lips. She closes her eyes. This is the first time she’s checked on him in a while, what with tending to the injured and the dead and trying to put their land – and their lives - back together again, and she doesn’t like what she sees.

And _fuck_ , she feels so responsible. She feels so weak, and she knows, she _knows_ Lexa was right about love.

But somehow, she doesn’t care.

*** * ***

 

On the fourth day after their win, she hears humming.

It isn’t the kind of humming she hears when Wick’s working away on a new project or thinking of Raven. This humming is different – it’s soft, it clearly isn’t improvised, and there’s something remorseful behind the notes despite their uplifting melody.

She hears it coming from the tent that she knows to stay away from, because it’s not her business, it’s not her place, it’s not her family –

_(Why does it feel so much like family?) -_

But still, when she goes to get wood for a fire, she’s got a whole lot of earth to choose from and yet she finds herself here.

She knows it’s Bellamy humming, but she can’t believe it.

So she moves toward the tent and promises that she’ll only allow herself a peek. The stars are so high and bright in the sky that she finds she doesn’t even need to use her flashlight, though it’s a little darker and quieter in this clearing. It’s a little separated from the rest of the camp, allowing for the most peace and quiet a person could get while staying inside the gate.

No one argued when the space was given to Bellamy and Octavia.

She creeps toward the entrance of the Blakes’ tent and stares through the crack, making sure the coast is clear before pulling open one of the flaps ever so quietly.

He’s there, where he’s always been, but he’s no longer clutching her hand like he used to. Instead, he’s crouched at her bedside, one arm folded beneath his chin and his other hand pulling through Octavia’s hair.

She never knew he could do something so _gently_.

Clarke holds her breath, though her heart is pounding.

Octavia looks calm and serene, but Clarke can see fresh tear tracks on her cheeks.

She knows it won’t take long before Octavia is back on her feet again. She only hopes that when the time comes, the girl will channel her grief into something more than revenge.

Bellamy’s voice, though rough and cracked from disuse, is harmonious. The song he hums is haunting. She feels as if she can feel the history and emotion behind it; something bigger, something no one else could ever understand.

Her eyelids droop slightly, and her skin buzzes all over. She is so tired. A song is something she hasn’t heard in a terribly long time.

She’s about to smile, she thinks, before the song stops.

When she opens her eyes again, Bellamy’s hand is frozen in Octavia’s hair as he lets his forehead fall to his arm. She hopes, for a moment, that he’s going to sleep, until he pushes back from his sister and stands, turning toward the entrance-

Turning right toward her.

She scrambles back from the entrance and toward the edge of the forest, but it’s too late to hide. She makes do by hastily pretending to collect wood, the blood rushing to her cheeks.

She can hear Bellamy exit the tent behind her, and she can feel him freeze as his gaze falls on her.

“Clarke?” he asks, his voice cracking.

She closes her eyes momentarily before spinning around to face him, a few pathetic excuses for wood piled up in her arms.

“Bellamy!” she says enthusiastically. “How are you feeling?”

He doesn’t buy it. “Confused as to why you’re carrying a pile of wet sticks.”

Her shirt does feel a little damp. With a sigh, she drops the sticks and puts her hands on her hips instead, trying to gain the upper hand.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

Bellamy smiles a little sadly and looks toward the ground. “And I wasn’t singing to my sister.”

“Glad we’re on the same page then,” Clarke says, idly kicking some dirt around.

Bellamy snorts, but the humour in it is paper thin, practically non-existent.

She frowns as she looks at him – or, rather, his silhouette – and sees the slouch of his back, the tangles of his hair messier than usual. She’d expected him to act irritated with her, but instead, he seems burnt out and vulnerable.

She doesn’t know whether to walk away and leave him alone, or to take advantage of his lowered defenses. 

The pull of her heart says the latter.

“Bellamy-“ she starts, but he already throws a hand out to stop her.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”  

A spark of hurt ignites inside of her, but it’s quickly extinguished by exasperation. She starts toward him until she can see the outlines of his face in the moonlight. “So what? We’re supposed to stand around while you starve yourself? You’re shut out here all day, Bellamy, how are any of us supposed to know if you’re okay?”

He looks passed her, to the trees beyond the gate. “If I’m not, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Somehow I find that incredibly hard to believe.”

He looks to her now, his blinks mere half-flutters, as if he’s trying to distract himself. “Clarke, I don’t know what you want me to say. Octavia’s not 100%, I’m just trying to make sure-“

“It’s more than that,” Clarke cuts in.

There’s silence, and it’s agony. Clarke closes the distance between them and reaches for his hand, squeezing his fingers. “Bellamy, _talk_ to me.”

Her eyes are shining with desperation, but Bellamy only looks away from her and breathes a quiet laugh.

She furrows her brow. “What?”

“I’m just not sure what you could possibly want to talk about with the amount you have to deal with here.”

Clarke narrows her eyes, incredulous. “ _Why_ are you worrying about me?”

Something she says makes him pull his hand from hers, and she ignores the pained skip of her heart. “I’m not worr- look, I’m making an observation. I leave this place for five days and when I come back, all this chaos is on your back. Not even you can handle that, Princess. Though you probably think you can.”  

She doesn’t know what to say. With the distant sounds of camp muffled in the night air, she stares at him with the question still digging into her bones. She licks her lips and she thinks he looks a little apprehensive in the moonlight. 

Her voice is soft and low, her brow creases in concern. “Bellamy, what happened in Mount Weather?”

The damage was done.

His eyes spark with something dangerous and a muscle jumps in his jaw. “Nothing _happened_ in the damn mountain. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll never ask again.”

His name dies in her throat as he disappears back into the tent with his sister and some unspoken secret that Clarke fears she’ll never know.

 

* * *

 

He can’t breathe.

He’s got fresh air all around him, all the oxygen he could ever need on this big green earth and _he can’t breathe_.

He tears open the flaps of the tent and stumbles out into the morning, the sweat from his nightmares still coating his skin. He gasps, taking in the air, but nothing happens. His throat is blocked with something invisible, his hand grasps at nothing.

He trips on his own feet as his legs turn to lead and he falls to his knees, clawing at the dirt beneath him. He places a hand on his useless, heaving chest and wills it to work but the world begins to jerk and shudder around him.

There’s a hand on his back. Octavia floats into view, blurring in and out of focus, her skin still pale, her lips still chapped, her arm wrapped around her torso. She kneels down with panic in her eyes.

“Bellamy?”

Her voice is underwater. His heart wants to jerk out of his chest when she licks her lips and turns her face toward basecamp.

_(Oh god, don’t call her, don’t call her-)_

“Clarke!”

_(She can’t know-)_

“Somebody get me Clarke!”

His mind screams. He can’t think.

Octavia’s hands are on his shoulders. “What’s wrong? Bell, tell me what’s wrong!”

He grips at her arm without meaning to. He wants to tell her to go back to bed, that she’ll rip her stitches, that she’ll bleed to death. But he only stares and chokes on his own lungs and lets tears burn his eyes.

He doesn’t hear Clarke approach but her face, haloed in gold, suddenly swarming in front of his sends his body into hysteria because he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or scared out of his mind.

She’s too close to him. Her hand is on his cheek. She’s saying something, her eyes are wide and blue and beautiful and he thinks he might just make it-

She grips his wrist and suddenly he’s back there, in the mountain washed in green light, and his skin burns as he’s back under that acidic spray that set his nerves on fire and he’s choking as they shoot pills down his throat and his vision is crowded with faces-

It’s Clarke.

And then it’s masked men with dead eyes.

He’s drowning in acid.

He’s caged up, there’s spit on his face, there’s a needle in his arm-

When he opens his eyes (he doesn’t remember closing them) he has his hands around his sister’s neck when he was sure he was choking the life from a little boy’s father only moments before.

“Bellamy don’t-!”

Clarke’s voice and her hands pushing on his arm bring him back all at once and he pulls his hands from Octavia’s neck with as much force as he can possibly muster. She coughs and he scrambles back on his hands and knees, trembling.

“O-Octavia-“

She looks to be in shock, but she’s already pulling herself up to a seated position with shaking arms. She puts her hands out, placating, as dirt tumbles from her hair. “It’s okay.”

Her brittle voice says otherwise.

Clarke’s chest is heaving and she’s pale with worry and fear on her knees, staring at him as she steadies Octavia at the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice broken. “I’m so sorry, O.”

“You only had her for a few seconds and you hardly squeezed,” Clarke explains, her voice distracted. “She’ll be fine.”

Octavia nods in agreement, swallowing hard.  

The silence that follows is one that he’s dreaded.

“Bell?” Octavia says, and they all know what she’s asking.

He wants to answer, but there are tremors so violent running through him that his knees feel hollow and his elbows are weakening beneath him.

“Breathe, Bellamy,” Clarke says softly. She reaches her hand out of to touch his shoulder, but her fingers hesitate.

He tries not to flinch.

 _Don’t be scared of me_ , he prays.

 _(Even though you’re a monster?_ he answers.)

She takes his stillness as permission to touch him, and when she does, his shoulders sag in relief. He lets his head drop as the sweat drips off the slope of his nose. Her fingers massage into him, sending sparks through his muscles.

“Shh,” she hears her say as she shuffles closer to him. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until now, and he knows it isn’t the first time she’s seen him cry, but he can’t help but resent the wetness on his cheeks anyways.

“You need to tell us what happened,” Clarke says, her voice quiet but insistent.

She isn’t asking anymore.

 

* * *

 

Her heart hardly slows its pace.

Bellamy asks to go for a walk and neither Clarke nor Octavia question him, because whatever he needs to help him spit out the truth is fine with them.

Her mind throbs and her heart lurches as Bellamy moves through the forest telling them – at first hesitantly, then with achingly thorough detail – about what happened in Mount Weather.

Water that burned –

Cages –

(Clarke’s reminded of saving Anya from that _filth_ –)

Chained up like animals –

Drained for their blood like _animals_ -

And she is so fucking angry.

And she knows perfectly well that he doesn’t need her, but she has the overpowering urge to never leave his side again.

He walks ahead of them at first, hurtling over fallen trees and cutting through the brier, and he never stops to let them intervene and Clarke doesn’t care, because she doesn’t think she could speak anyway.

They only stop when he gets to the part about a man named Lovejoy and jams a machete into a nearby tree. Octavia is quicker than Clarke. She moves in front of him suddenly and grips her brother’s bicep, ducking so that she knows she’s in his line of sight.

“They got what they deserved,” she says, her voice deathly quiet and shuddering with anger, and it’s the last thing Clarke expected to come out of Octavia’s mouth, but she knows she means it.

She knows, because she feels it too.

When Bellamy turns around and doesn’t look at her, doesn’t speak to her as he moves past, she knows it’s because he needs to be alone.

But she can’t help but feel the ground opening up beneath her feet, because she did this.

This is her fault.

 

* * *

 

It’s around the dying embers of a fire that a kiss happens.

Clarke slips onto the log next to him, and they’re alone. The stars are dim tonight, but the soft orange glow of the fire is enough to keep their faces bright.

He’s the first to speak.

“You told me once that you needed me,” Bellamy says, his voice rough. “That they needed me.”

Clarke nods.

Bellamy shakes his head. “Well now they need _you_ , Clarke. And I don’t think you’re going to fulfill that need by torturing yourself over something that I chose to do.”

“I was the one who sent you up there-“

“And since when do I take orders from you?” Bellamy says with a smirk.

Clarke is caught with her mouth open and nothing to say. Her eyes dart across his face searching for some hint of blame, some flicker of resentment.

She doesn’t find it.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and she’s horrified to hear the tremor in her voice and to feel the painful lump forming in her throat, but she knows she’s been keeping it in for days. “I should have never said-“

“You said what you needed to say, Clarke,” he explains, his eyes soft. “One person is a lot more expendable than hundreds.”

She shakes her head frantically, her mouth in a tight line. “Not you. I told you, I can’t-“

Clarke falters and turns away, pressing her cheek into her shoulder. She can feel Bellamy tense beside her as she lets tears fall from her eyes, until he places a warm hand on her back.

“I know,” he swallows, staring into the fire as he squeezes her shoulder. She leans into his touch.

When she looks back up at him, the fire is casting moving shadows on his face, mottled with purple bruises. She sees the circles beneath his eyes and the weight of his smile and that’s when she notices a glimmer of something in the look he’s now giving her.

It’s something desperate, something urgent, something indigent.

She thinks he’s never looked more beautiful.

Clarke Griffin realizes then that maybe Bellamy Blake does need her after all. Even if its just for today, for tonight or for a moment, he needs her as much as she needs him – maybe more, for now - and they’ll deny it until their very last breath, but here they are.

She’s felt a stir in her stomach before, and she’s recognized it, and she’s buried it.

But she’s never wanted to kiss him until now.

She sees his eyes dart to her lips and linger and _linger-_

He wants to kiss her, too.

When he moves closer, she thinks that this is it, and her heart lurches in exhilaration and just as quickly sinks in horror because what if this is wrong, what if she loses him, what if she cares too much-

But he only touches her hair. He’s gentle as he brushes it away from her face, wiping a tear from her cheek, and she finds her hand stealing across the log to slide her fingers between his. Her skin erupts in goosebumps at the touch. His hand is hot as it curls around her own.

He looks down at their entwined hands with some measure of sadness and longing in his eyes. She thinks she does the same, but she understands.

They can’t. Not yet, anyway.

And it feels okay. This right here – whatever it is, whatever it needs to be to preserve the echoes of laughter travelling across camp for as long as they can - feels right. It feels like the chrysalis of their strange, wearying relationship.

“Thanks, Princess,” he whispers.

He softly kisses the skin above her eyebrow.

Maybe he’s thanking her for saving his sister, or for being there when he cried, or for not kissing him when she could have, because they both know that they wouldn’t have been able to stop themselves.

She doesn’t know, but it’s enough.

This, and the first real smile that’s graced her face in weeks, and the first deep breath Bellamy’s taken in days. It’s enough to know that they’re safe.

It’s enough to know that they’re loved.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for that little tease at the end there (and this entire fic for that matter) but I hope everyone got a nice fix out of this? I'd love to read and respond to your comments. xo.


End file.
